Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Warning about a new comment spam scam

Posted on 2021-05-05 by Stephan Sokolow

This morning, I found a message in my comment moderation queue which I thought I should warn people about. Like most comment spam these days, it listed a genuine-looking e-mail address at a big-name provider, but instead of trying to … Continue reading →

Posted in Web Wandering & Opinion | 2 Comments

Nicer Terminal Commands For Flatpak-Installed Applications

Posted on 2021-04-29 by Stephan Sokolow

If you’re like me, you probably like to launch your GUI applications from the terminal at least occasionally… or from scripts… or from a quick launcher which doesn’t search .desktop names because you find it annoying to have your intent … Continue reading →

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RAR Test Files

Posted on 2021-04-04 by Stephan Sokolow

Quick question. How many people realized that it’s legally impossible to create a RAR file without using WinRAR, RAR for Linux, etc., all of which are shareware? At first, that might seem like no big deal, given that we have … Continue reading →

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Stripping Emoji from File And Folder Names

Posted on 2021-03-17 by Stephan Sokolow

There’s an annoying little problem that happens sometimes when you save stuff off the web, which the popularity of emoji has brought into the spotlight: Some tools still assume Unicode code points will fit within 16 bits and break with … Continue reading →

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Food For Thought

Posted on 2021-03-01 by Stephan Sokolow

I was making food and my mind got to wandering. “Broccoli… sounds like broccoly… same construction as shiny or smelly… what does it mean to have the characteristic of broccol?” “Cucumber… OK, If the vegetable is a “cucumb-er”, what does … Continue reading →

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Platformer Design Trends: Then and Now

Posted on 2020-11-27 by Stephan Sokolow

I started playing Celeste a couple of days ago and, while I was playing it, I started tallying up some of the ways that the average modern platformer, retro-styled or not, differs from its counterparts in the 80s and 90s. … Continue reading →

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Automated Testing for Open Watcom C/C++ and DOS

Posted on 2020-10-31 by Stephan Sokolow

UPDATE 2021-05-29: Added section for Snapshot Testing One of the hobby projects I’ve been poking at again is written for DOS using Open Watcom C/C++ (v2 fork), and, being as averse to drudgework (and spoiled by modern tooling) as I … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing | 2 Comments